It seems only logical to include a thread about Dwarf Fortress, the game these forums were named after.It's a citybuilder/roguelike RPG with a twist: Instead of building a city with say, humans, you've got short little dwarves....I really don't know how to explain it. If you can stand ASCII graphics, give it a try.www.bay12games.com/dwarvesThe forum theme here was copied off their forum theme 'Darkling' so if you like this one, go take a look at theirs.

Pre-existing Bay12'ers: Discuss the finer points of DF, as I can't explain it well enough.

Well, in Dwarf Fortress, you start with 7 dwarves(nice reference) but you don't control them directly. Instead, you tell each individual dwarf what they can and can't do, then set out jobs for them to accomplish. These jobs include things like building, crafting, recordkeeping, weaving, and mining. Some other jobs, such as sleeping, eating or drinking, are automatic to dwarves and they will do them as long as they are alive. Speaking of which, the game features many ways for your dwarves to perish, but luckily if you make your fortress worth a bit of money, some more will come along.

It's certainly necessary once those goblins show their hides! You'll be required to participate in epic battles inderectly, through setting up the proper tasks that will get your dwarven militiary armored, and armed with one of 6 weapons, (spear, crossbow, sword, battle axe, mace, war hammer) or just have them beat the enemy to death barehanded. Fortress defence is especially important in the trading season though. I doubt the merchants would be pleased to roll in and find invaders at the trade depot, picking their teeth with the bones of their emissary.

Out of Topic: It'd be pretty interesting for everyone to cover a different section in their own writing style. We could all piece it up and submit it to the wiki as part of the newbies guide.

This game is also modable to an extent, you can add new races, languages, items, creatures, and other things that are currently open, as this game is still under development. As this game progresses on development, we might be able to modify and add new buildings and make brand new items.

Did we mention the world generation yet? No we haven't! How silly of us.

Before starting a game you can either download a pregenerated world, or generate your own. You can change a huge amount of variables in order to make some sort of crazy hellish fire-world or perhaps a massive archipelago, but mostly you'll probably just use one of the standard, earthlike settings. The game will then generate a world map and populate it with creatures. But that's not all. Next, it simulates the history too, whether a hundred or thousand years, it will create an intricate history full of wars and heroes, massacres and their instigators, families and cities, et cetera.

and what fun you will have! I can honestly say that it took me about 6 hours (2 days. 1 hour the first day and when i started to catch on 5 hours the next) to get past the ascii barrier. Its a lot less difficult than most assume.